Bill Ottman, CEO of Minds.com, debates digital ethics—from surveillance capitalism (Facebook/Google’s $100B+ ad-driven tracking) to the Manila Principles’ call for court-ordered content removal over subjective bans. He contrasts Minds’ ERC-20 token-based, chronological feed with centralized platforms’ algorithmic manipulation, citing studies like Facebook’s mood-altering newsfeed experiments. On censorship, Ottman defends free speech via transparency and community moderation, even for conspiracy theories, while warning of risks like unchecked AI or classified tech (e.g., Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map). They predict a 10-year shift to decentralized networks, but Rogan questions whether profit-driven giants will ever relinquish control. Ottman envisions open-source systems rewarding merit over money, though both acknowledge systemic hurdles—like Google’s app restrictions (e.g., "the nipple" controversy) or political corruption blocking ethical progress. [Automatically generated summary]
For people who don't know, Bill is the CEO and co-founder of Minds.com, and we've been going back and forth through email, and you got hoaxed by some dude who said he was Joey Diaz.
Yeah, you definitely lose your ability to write words.
It's funny, I tried writing in, for whatever reason, I write mostly in all caps, because I mostly just write notes, but I tried writing with lowercase letters, and then I tried writing in cursive, and my cursive is like, it's almost like I have to relearn it.
Okay, let's say that you find some Chinese bot that's purposely disseminating incorrect and negative information about maybe a potential presidential candidate.
Let's pick one.
Tulsi Gabbard.
They're disseminating fake news about her.
You know for sure that it's fake.
You know for sure...
I don't know how you know, but you know for sure who the source of it is.
So I'm trying to position the network or just like advocate for other networks to take more of a neutral stance.
There's this cool thing.
It's called the Manila Principles, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote with a bunch of other internet freedom groups, which is talking about how digital intermediaries shouldn't be making these subjective decisions about what's getting taken down and should require a court order.
Now, with a DNS provider or something less content-focused...
There was a guy who was the wrong skin guy who was saying he was born in the wrong color skin, that he's transracial, and he would make these ridiculous arguments about it.
I was just thinking, I don't know the moment they had to do it, but let's say four years ago, a lot of those troll accounts had to sort of say, we're not this person.
For instance, the main one I follow is now it's known as not Bill Walton.
He tweets funny sports jokes all night long, like what's on TV, as though he's Bill Walton, like in Bill Walton's voice.
But at some point, he had to put in the name, like this is not Bill Walton, but still has quite a few followers, and he still gets the jokes out.
And so some people accept that for this free search engine with free email and things along those lines.
They accept the fact that a certain percentage of what they're doing is not going to be private.
Or at least...
Their searches are not going to be private.
Like, say if you search, like, you're thinking about buying a Jeep, and you search Jeeps, you look at, you know, 2019 Jeep, and then all of a sudden all your Google ads are about Jeeps.
Yeah, and so there's all different layers of like what we use with your browsers, your apps, your operating system, your food, your, you know, government, your energy, like all of this technology.
It has code that's associated with it.
And when you open up your computer, when you sign into a browser, when you open up an app, you are empowering that app.
That's how the apps of the world become huge, monstrous corporations, is because we all use them every day.
So if you switch from Mac OS to GNU Linux or Debian or Ubuntu, if you use Brave or Firefox, if you DuckDuckGo is actually proprietary, which is annoying, but they are very privacy-focused.
And then there's apps.
There's Mines.
There's other open-source, decentralized social networks out there that we can potentially federate with.
There's really cool, new, interesting protocols like DAT and IPFS that are more torrent-style back-end.
So there's actually no servers available.
In a giant warehouse like Facebook and Google, it's fully peer-to-peer.
And we're trying to balance it because it's not like decentralization equals good and centralization equals bad.
But in order to get a sweet app like Instagram-style, you need servers to process video.
And so the tech is still sort of immature in the fully peer-to-peer Bitcoin-style environment.
But we're definitely getting there.
And I just think it's important for people to use things that are transparent to them and respecting our freedom.
Yeah, I think one of the problems with these giant companies is that once they become big, you kind of use them as a default, and it's very difficult to get people to communicate with you off of them.
It's hard to say, hey man, I'm launching this new social media app.
I would imagine you could speak to this.
I'm launching this new social media app, and I want you to join it.
People are like, but I'm already on fucking Facebook.
Facebook and all the congressional hearings and the inner workings of it all.
The fact that it profits off of outrage, so it wants people to argue.
The AI, the computer learning, specifically wants people to have contentious debates about things because that keeps their eyes focused on the website.
And if your eyes are focused on Facebook, then those Facebook ads are very valuable.
At the behest of CNN and the U.S. government-funded think tanks, it says we had almost 4 million subscribers, did not violate Facebook rules, were given no warning, and Facebook isn't responding to us.
Yeah, so obviously there's some contention, there's some issues, and there's a lot of money involved in these things, and I think that plays a giant part in how they decide to make decisions.
I mean, if the controversial videos are about how Jews are evil, and you have this video about Jews being evil, and then you're like, buy Razer computers!
I can understand not wanting to support certain types of content.
And maybe advertisers feel like they're supporting that content by advertising next to it.
But I also don't think that people, when they're watching a controversial video on the internet, say, oh my gosh, you know, this advertiser is completely out of line for being next to this controversial thing.
So you think that they're not sharing their software because their software is encoded and designed to spy on you and extract information and sell that information?
Well the algorithms, you're only reaching 5% of your own followers organically on Facebook now.
And they're starting to change the chronological feed on Instagram too.
And they know that this causes depression and they're still doing it because they know that they think they're better at showing you what you want to see than you are.
They've done studies about mental health in relation to...
Actually, Facebook got exposed like five years ago for doing a secret study on...
On like a few million users where they were injecting both positive and negative content into the newsfeed and they proved that they could affect people's moods.
This was with Princeton.
There's a huge backlash and they're like, oh sorry.
I think that the core purpose of a social network is to subscribe to someone and see their stuff.
And when people subscribe to you, they see your stuff.
So when you spend years building up a following on social media, and say you earn 100,000 followers or something, and then suddenly the network says, nah, your friends can't see that anymore.
That's not cool.
And even Twitter's default newsfeed is no longer chronological.
You have to click it to go chronological, and then it defaults back to their weird algorithm thing.
So we're saying, look, 100% organic, chronological, raw, forever as default.
And then if you want to curate algorithms or have recommended stuff come in as an alternative, fine.
But that is the core purpose of social media, is to connect with people that follow you and the other way around.
Right, and they're doing it because they want to keep you around.
Yeah, that makes sense.
How many different companies are subscribing to that?
It seems like all the big ones we're saying are curating and moving things around and all the big ones have an algorithm that's designed to keep you on board, right?
Do you think that this is this marriage between something that is this social media network that's designed to allow people to communicate with each other and then commerce, like this business, like how do we maximize this business?
How do we get more profit out of this business?
How do we get these people to engage more?
And then they start monkeying with the code and screwing with what you see and what you don't see.
We have like a million and a half registered, like quarter million active.
We're small.
But the weird thing is that Even though we're a fraction of the size, especially smaller creators who come get better reach on minds than they do on Facebook and Twitter because we have this reward and incentive system sort of like gamified where you earn reach and you earn more of a voice for contributing.
So like you could have an account on Twitter for 10 years and post thousands and thousands of tweets and you never hit that viral nerve and you just never really get much exposure.
So we're trying to help people be heard.
And so you'll find a small creator who on other networks has no followers, have thousands and thousands of followers on Minds.
Engineer the control out of ourselves so that we aren't even in a position to really take people's stuff down or What if someone posts your house and your information, where your kids go to school?
I think that on the central servers, obviously, yes, we're always going to moderate.
And if it's legal, it can stay.
If it's not illegal, it can't.
But a decentralized social network is definitely where we have to go.
Because, and yeah, okay, it's scary.
And you know, you've talked about this, like, things are getting more transparent.
This is sort of like the inevitable evolution of technology.
I mean, how many hours a day do you stream?
A couple?
You know, 25 years ago, would you have thought you'd be sharing, you know, 20% of your life live streaming to, you know, millions of people?
Like, our lives are becoming more transparent just inevitably.
And it definitely, when you censor people, it just makes them aware that there's a plot against them too, right?
A lot of conservatives on Twitter are finding that.
Sam Harris actually just sent me an article.
It was detailing the bias against conservatives on Twitter that they've actually done, you know, like some real studying it, and it's pretty demonstrable.
So what you're saying is that these algorithms that they use in order to maximize their revenue and give people things that they like but actually takes away from things being posted chronologically, keeps certain things from being seen by as many people, so it keeps them from being as viral, so it keeps the whole thing from being organic.
Yeah, it gets to that point where we're realizing that all of these things, all these social media things, are really recent.
We've only had them for a few years, and we don't necessarily know what the rules should or shouldn't be.
So it's good.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on.
I wanted to find out where these upstarts or these new people that are coming into the game, like mine's, like where you're coming into the game from and what is your position on what's wrong with the current state of affairs.
But, to play devil's advocate, it's one of the worst ways for people to express themselves in a way where you consider other human beings' experiences and feelings and the way they're going to receive what you're saying because there's no social cues, you're not interacting with them, you're not looking at them in the eyes.
It's one of the weirder forms of communication between human beings and one that I would argue we have not really necessarily successfully navigated it yet.
You know, the famous one that protests those soldiers' funerals and anything gay.
They're like ruthlessly, viciously fundamental Christians.
They do a lot of protesting at funerals and do a lot of stuff to try to get...
She was with them for the longest time and then got on Twitter.
And through communicating on Twitter, and when you meet her, you would never believe it in a million years that she was ever this fundamentalist and that she was ever some mean person sending hateful messages to people because their son was gay or whatever it was.
Now, she's completely cured of it.
She has no contact with the church anymore.
She's married.
She has a kid.
She's completely outside of it.
She does a podcast now and gives TED Talks and speaks about radicalization and about how she was kind of indoctrinated and grew up in this family.
And her grandfather, Fred Phelps, was this, you know, it's like, it's a fucking mean guy.
Like a really mean, he's the God Hates Fags guy.
You know, they would have those signs that they would hold up at soldiers' funerals.
I mean, it's like really inflammatory stuff.
But through Twitter, through her communicating with people on Twitter, specifically her now husband, like, he cured her, like, just with rational discourse and communication, and she was open to it.
Well, look, in the case of, like, Megan Phelps, that's a real thing, right?
She really did change.
Another example is Christian Piccolini.
Do you know who he is?
He was a white supremacist, KKK member, guy, who's been on Sam Harris' podcast, he's also done some TED Talks, who now speaks out against it and talks about how he's indoctrinated and talks about how lost he was and then he was brought into this ideology.
There's many people like that all over the world.
Majid Nawaz, another perfect example.
He was an Islamist.
I mean, he was trying to form a caliphate, was literally thinking about radical Islamic terrorism as being some sort of a solution.
Now he's the opposite.
Now he's trying to get people to leave, and he's trying to get people to be more reasonable and secular.
And, like, who is to decide what this path to redemption is and whether or not you've completed it?
Right?
Who is to decide?
Like, maybe you are, like, a hyper-radical lefty, and maybe Jamie's points of view and yours are just never going to line up, so you're like, fuck him, he's banned for life, which a lot of people have been banned for life.
And when you look at some of the infractions they've been banned for, they're like, boy, I don't know about that one.
I think, though, that your ideology is going to be, your point of view and perspective is going to be very different than maybe someone who's like a radical Marxist.
You know, shouldn't they be allowed to post on the site too?
Someone who's like an extreme socialist.
Someone like AOC. Yeah.
You know, someone who thinks that we should give money to people who are unwilling to work.
Someone who thinks that we should try to engineer society and tax the top X percent, you know, 70-something percent of their income.
There's a lot of those different people, and we have to figure out how to make it so that, well...
We have to figure out a way to make it so all the ideas can compete in the marketplace of ideas.
All these different ideas can compete, and we can find out which one is better.
And we can find out which one is better.
You don't always find out which one is better, though, right?
So, like, some of that Japanese stuff with tentacles, like, some of that stuff is just like, what is happening here?
Right.
I got, like, octopuses banging chicks in every hole, and they're choking on it, and they've got one in their ass and one in their vagina, and it's all, like, very liquidy.
You know, there's a lot of splattering going on.
You're like, what the fuck is this, and is that okay?
Because it's just art, right?
I mean, if it was a person getting fucked left, right, and center by an octopus, he'd be like, yeah, I think we've crossed some lines here.
That's bestiality.
But if it's an image, and then the image is a girl with a schoolgirl costume on.
She's dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl with a little skirt, and she's getting banged by an octopus.
Well, we were talking about the other day, during the Super Bowl, that Adam Levine had his shirt off, and Brian Redman was like, hey, wasn't that what Janet Jackson got in trouble for?
Like, yeah.
Why is it okay if Adam Levine shows his nipples, and Janet Jackson's nipples are offensive because they're sexualized, because she's a woman?
And then when things come up, like one of the things that Instagram has been doing is like they say, I follow a lot of hunters and Instagram has things where they say, warning, this is sensitive content.
Nature is Metal gets popped on that a lot too because Nature is Metal is an Instagram site that's all like these crazy images and videos of animals eating other animals and attacking other animals.
And sometimes, some of them, they just decide, this one's too fucked up.
They just decide.
There's one of them where a lion is looking out of a wildebeest asshole from the inside.
There's this giant hole they've eaten through its stomach, and it's looking out its asshole.
And they're like, yeah!
This one, you're going to have to click on your own.
You know, I sent Eddie Bravo this thing from The Guardian about the upsurge in people that believe in the flat earth and all of it because of YouTube videos and that apparently now YouTube is, they want to censor those.
They want to, they feel like Flat Earth videos and I think another one, check this if I'm wrong about this, but I think they also want to lean on those anti-vaccination videos.
I think there's a concern with those.
I think they're worried about a bunch of different things along those lines.
They feel like there's disinformation and outright lies that are being spread.
But, uh, um, I also believe it's such a stupid conspiracy that you should have it.
You should be allowed and it should be something you should show your friends.
Like, dude, I need you to go look at this.
this has 37,000 thumbs up and they really believe that the fucking earth is flat they really believe there's an ice ball outside Antarctica they really believe that the sky doesn't move that it's that the you know that we're in some sort of a i think it's like projected images or something like there's a bunch of like really really wacky theories like i think those are okay yeah Of course.
But I think freedom of information sort of transcends a lot of these little debates.
So if there was more freedom of information, so we actually knew everything the government knew about all of the different conspiracies and black projects, the black budget.
The problem with that, though, is then you're dealing with foreign governments that are way better at keeping secrets than we are, and if they have access to our secrets.
One of the things that's been kind of disturbing is seeing the actual influence that these Russian troll farms have had on not just our political process, But sowing seeds of dissent amongst people and starting conflict amongst people and how people are buying into it.
You know, like this podcast I've been talking about a lot with Sam Harris and Renee DiResta, that's her name, right?
Where they talked about how these Russian troll farms set up a conflict by having a pro-Muslim rally across the street from a pro-Texas Pride rally.
And they just set it all up and had it there and then a skirmish broke out.
Because these people are across the street from each other.
And that they do this with – they were having these African-American groups that were saying anyone but Hillary, and they were really trying to get people to vote for Jill Stein, really trying to get people to even consider Trump anyone but Hillary.
And then they were also having ones that were against them.
But it's a fascinating thing, isn't it, that this is like a concerted effort?
How do you feel about that?
When you're in a position where you have a fairly small network, but it's influential, right?
And then so you're watching Zuckerberg and the Facebook shit on TV, and they're talking to these congresspeople and senators, and they're talking to all these politicians about what's going on and how to stop it and what they're trying to do, and you feel like, oh God, this is an arena that I'm getting into.
When you're saying a Jill Stein meme, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you posting a Jill Stein meme.
Like, say, if you have a joke about Jill Stein, you wanted to post it in a meme.
There's nothing wrong with that.
What's weird for people is that people are being hired to make these memes, and these memes may not have anything to do with their own personal ideology.
They might just decide, hey, I'm going to collect this check And they make, apparently according to Renee in this podcast she did with Sam Harris, they make really hilarious memes.
Every time there's a big scandal, every time, whether it's data manipulation or our first big growth spurt was during the Snowden days when he released all the information.
People are really upset with what's happening.
It's just...
What are they supposed to do?
This is what they're using for their communication.
It's not easy to just achieve a multi-billion person network overnight so that everybody's there.
And so we're stuck.
But again, I think that supplementing, just installing these alternative apps, not just us, like the whole open source market.
I'm not even here trying to just talk about what we're doing.
It's like, if you don't have those apps on your phone and you don't use those browsers, I'm sorry, you just, you're not helping.
And people just want to vote with their energy, I think, and vote with their time.
So it's more of an education thing.
People just don't know that this matters and that this can help change the whole internet simply by logging into an app once in a while.
It's like organic food.
I mean, we want to put things into it.
We want to support things that have integrity.
So when you click something, you are supporting that thing.
When you're sitting on an app all day, you are feeding that app.
That's how the apps get all the money.
That's where they get all their funding.
That's where it's all based, is in user retention and energy.
But just the principle that the experts could, because they will.
You know, there's all kinds of think tanks and whatnot that would love to dive into the source code to understand how these companies were actually behaving.
So, you know, waving the privacy flag without being open source or...
This is getting a little bit into the weeds, but a lot of this comes down to licensing of content or code.
So the license that we use for our code is called the general public license, the AGPL v3, which means that anyone can take our code and do whatever they want with it.
They can sell it.
They can do anything.
But if they make changes, they have to show them with everybody else.
So it's sort of like the Creative Commons share-alike license, which essentially says the same thing.
Take my video, photo, remix it, do whatever you want, but you have to share the result with everybody else.
Open source basically means you can do whatever you want with it.
You can take it, make it your own, keep your own little secret sauce if it makes you feel good.
They get conflated because free software sounds like Free as in free beer, not free as in freedom.
So, you know, licensing is really what this all coalesces into.
But it's been proven that you can make a lot of money with free and open source software.
I mean, look at WordPress.
It's a hugely successful technology corporation, multi-billion dollars.
People share the code.
It created a network effect because they did that.
It's like the Grateful Dead would let everybody record their music and that's how it spread.
So it's actually a good marketing tactic and it also gives transparency so people can see what the hell is going on.
Well, you know, they probably don't want to hang out with you anyway, let's be honest.
But what you're doing by back and forth, and I know people who do engage in it, and sometimes they have these anxiety moments where they don't sleep for days because they're involved in these Twitter feuds.
I mean, I know people that have done this, where they've gotten involved in Twitter feuds, and they'll wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, they check their Twitter feed, and like, oh, Christ, man.
Like, you gotta go on a yoga retreat or something.
And my concern is that what we're experiencing right now in this flat form of two-dimensional text is something that is very overwhelming to a lot of people's time.
I mean, you're looking at some kids that are online, social media, eight, ten hours a day just staring at their phones.
I'm extremely concerned, and I have some jokes about it in my act, about the next wave, because I think that we're overwhelmed by this incredibly attractive medium where we're attracted to our phones, we're attracted to this style of engaging in information and receiving information and passing information and online arguments and debates and looking at pictures and this constant stream,
which, you know, Just looking at your phone, it's not that thrilling.
It's just like, hmm, it's not that thrilling.
It's like, okay, yeah, but it's still getting you all day long.
Like, there's nothing really crazy happening.
When my concern is if something really crazy does start to happen.
When you really can have experiences that are hyper-normal, like that are more powerful than anything you can experience in this regular carbon-based physical touch-and-feel world.
And once we start experiencing augmented reality, the integration between humans and technology, and then the ability to share augmented reality.
If you were at work and you have these fucking goggles on and your girlfriend is at work on the other side of town and you guys both have these similar video pets that are with you and dancing around and providing you with fucking advertisements and giving you things, there's next levels to this stuff that I'm trying to see the future, but I'm too fucking stupid and I don't really know anything about technology, but I know that they're going to get deeper into our lives.
I know that these technologies, not they like the government, but these technologies, they're going to get deeper into your life.
And that they got you by the balls and the clit with a fucking phone.
And it doesn't even do much.
Take some pictures, look at some pictures, look at some text, watch some videos.
But this idea that, I don't want to give too much away, but, you know, he's acting as if they are going to be the moral authority about the types of content that can exist on the App Store.
Our devices connected to the humanity that makes us, us.
We do that in many ways.
One of the most important is how we honor a teaching that can be found in Judaism, but is shared across all faiths and traditions.
It's a lesson that was carried forward by the late Elie Wiesel.
May his memory be a blessing.
It's a lesson put into practice by America's Muslim community who raised thousands for the victims of the Tree of Life killings.
Do not be indifferent to the bloodshed of your fellow man.
Do not be indifferent.
This mandate moves us to speak up for immigrants and for those who seek opportunity in the United States.
We do it not only because their individual dignity, creativity, and ingenuity have the power to make this country an even better place, but because our own humanity commands us to welcome those who need welcome.
It moves us to speak up for the LGBTQ community, for those whose differences can make them a target for violence and scorn.
We do so not only because these unique and uncommon perspectives can open our eyes to new ways of thinking, but because our own dignity moves us to see the dignity in others.
Perhaps most importantly, it drives us not to be bystanders as hate tries to make its headquarters in the digital world.
At Apple, we believe that technology needs to have a clear point of view on this challenge.
There is no time to get tied up in knots.
That's why we only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence.
You have no place on our platforms.
You have no home here.
From the earliest days of iTunes to Apple Music today, we have always prohibited music with a message of white supremacy.
How about the films that you can get on the iTunes store?
There's a lot of very, very, very violent films.
Like, extremely violent.
There's a lot of films that, like...
Is it that they're making the distinction between something that's fiction, that although it may be disturbing, you understand that this is a movie and this is something someone wrote versus someone...
Well, not only that, there's division in LBGT and Q. There's a big issue right now with Martina Navratilova that was going on about her discussing the reality of trans women competing against biological women and that she opposes it and she thinks there's some fundamental advantages which is leading to a lot of weightlifting world records being broken by trans women and she's like, this is fucking preposterous.
Including trans women with penises.
Now they're attacking her for being transphobic.
So there's not even a united opinion in the LBGTQ community.
Well, there's always going to be differing opinions, and especially when you have something like...
Trans women competing against biological women and you know you have someone like Martina Davratilova that made her her life's work and her career competing as a biological woman.
She's gonna have some opposition to that and then the idea that everyone's supposed to be lumped in together with some mandate that no one is really openly discussed you're supposed to agree and it fluctuates and moves like the tide you know like what is and is and moves like the tide It just changes.
It's like this court of public opinion.
It's constantly rendering new verdicts.
And you have to keep up and catch up.
Things that were acceptable just a few years ago are totally unacceptable.
There's a lot of blowback, and believe me, there's a lot of debate and discussion, but also, believe me, when someone does do some politically incorrect, really good stand-up, people go fucking bonkers.
They love it.
It's one of the best times ever right now to do stand-up.
Well, I think what's not suitable is that commerce should not dictate how human beings are allowed to openly communicate with each other.
And one of the things that Jack said that's kind of contrary to his company's actions was that he believes that the ability to communicate is a fundamental right, like the ability to Like, if you're in the KKK, you can still order electricity.
So, should you be able to just distribute information?
If people say no, then you have to say, okay, well, who's to decide what can and cannot be distributed, and then who's to decide if they can go somewhere else?
And then what happens if you tell a person they can't go anywhere?
We're looking at more of a community moderation structure so that we've even been considering like a juror system so that if we make a bad decision and someone appeals it, then the community can potentially make the decisions as opposed to us.
Or – but then when you go far enough into the decentralization world, it just becomes impossible.
So we sort of have to decide.
I think that's where it's going to go.
I don't know.
That's the uncensorable internet.
And this idea that we can do things and then...
Just delete them.
In the GDPR, the European privacy laws have this whole idea of the right to be forgotten online, which is very difficult because deleting things from any database, especially a blockchain, is not easy.
So the idea that you can go on the internet, do crazy shit, and then just have it taken away, it's a paradox because privacy means control, but It doesn't jive with the way that technology works to just be able to delete things.
You're writing to a database.
That's not even how the universe probably really works.
You can't just say, oh, I just went and punched that guy in the face in the bar and I just want to delete that from having happened.
It depends on the level of risk you're willing to take.
I mean, you see some of those videos, like, I've cried at those videos where, like, the woman, like, hears for the first time, you're like, oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, but you're looking at it in terms of your own personal benefit.
You're looking at it in terms of mine's personal benefit.
I mean, you created this thing.
It's not just pure for altruistic reasons.
It's a business, right?
So if they had established this open source network that was Facebook and you just came along and built yours, well, yeah, that would be great for you.
But why would that be great for them?
I mean, they're obviously in a business.
Now, the problem with the business is this business is the business of distributing information.
And then we have to decide, okay, at what point in time do we allow these, air quotes, overlords to dictate what can and cannot be distributed.
And how did this happen?
Because in the beginning, I bet it didn't happen.
I bet in the beginning, you could just put on whatever the fuck you wanted.
And then they had to deal with that.
And then they had to figure out after a while, okay, maybe we shouldn't have this on.
If we're going to sell advertising, we really should maximize the amount of clicks.
Okay, how do we do that?
Well, we put things in people's feeds that they want to see.
We put things that people want to debate about and argue about and political things, all sorts of different things that excite them and get them to be engaged with the platform.
That's their business.
Their business is...
I mean, it's no different in a lot of ways than Amazon or than any other business that wants to grow.
How do they grow?
Well, they grow by maximizing their profits and by maximizing the amount of eyes that get to their advertising so they get more clicks and more people get engaged.
That's what their business is.
You're deciding.
By saying, if they were open source, look how much further along the world would be.
Okay, again, to play devil's advocate, the vast amount of users are not using those platforms.
The vast amount of users are using these controlled platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.
Like, if you're talking about, I'm just guessing, but if you're talking about the gross number of human beings that are interacting with each other on social media, they're mostly uncontrolled networks.
You're saying that this is not going to last.
But there's no evidence that it isn't going to last.
But once we have functionally competitive products that you wouldn't even know the difference and there's enough people there, then it's basically the decision of, you know, am I going to choose the one that respects my privacy and freedom or the one that doesn't?
I think it's partly because it's a giant business.
And I think when you have an obligation to your shareholders and to maximize profits...
And when you're trying to maximize profits, too, and there's this universal growth model where every year it just has to get a little bit bigger, otherwise you're fucking up as a CEO. You don't have to experience that with Mines.
You know, the guys who run Joe Beef in Montreal, it's this amazing restaurant, Fred and Dave, and they were talking about it, that when they go to dinner, they shut their phone off.
I'm a good guest, a good table guest.
I shut my phone off.
I don't engage.
I don't check it.
It's a similar thing to podcasting, in a way, in that one of the good benefits of podcasting is that for three hours or two hours, whatever the fuck you're doing, you're going to sit down, and you're just going to engage with the person.
Just you and I. Me and Bill.
We're just talking, right?
And that we're not checking our phone.
We're not looking at the television.
We're not looking at the laptop.
There's no distractions.
And that is one of the rare moments in life where you get to talk to someone for several hours.
And over the last, you know, nine years that I've been doing this podcast, it's benefited me tremendously just in having real conversations with people.
We're just sitting across from somebody for hours just talking to them.
Getting better at understanding how people think, getting better at understanding how I think, getting way better at communicating and knowing when to talk and when not to talk and what questions to ask and try to understand the thought process that another person has.
And you walk out of that with some lessons, like real, legit, tangible lessons.
Those fucking don't happen when you're staring at your phone while you're talking to people.
It, like, cuts all that off.
The conversation stays shallow.
You miss important points.
Like, oh, I'm sorry, what?
What were you saying?
You do that kind of shit.
And, like, then the other person knows you're not engaged.
Juggernaut media companies are the only places that can share information.
So it's incredible.
It's crucial.
We need everyone to have the ability to share and so that you can check because maybe you're more likely to get the reality of what's going on in the world from your newsfeed than the big companies.
Well, that was what the Sober October thing kind of turned out to be about.
And there's a lot of lessons in learning that, too.
You know, you learn lessons about your reliance on either substances or things.
And one of the things that I learned from the Sober October Challenge, the last one, was that when you engage in really rigorous physical activity six and seven days a week, you don't give a fuck.
Like, you don't give a fuck.
Like, all the chatter, the internal chatter just goes away.
All the negative chatter, like, it's like taking a pill.
Like, I don't give a fuck pill.
It's amazing.
It's really amazing because I think a lot of personal anxiety that people carry around with them is a physical energy that's not being expressed because I think the body has certain demands and certain potential and in order to have this certain potential like your potential for athletic output You have to have this energy source, right?
And this body energy source when not expressed.
And when you're sitting in a cubicle all day, day after day after day, it builds this internal anxious feeling and tension.
And that becomes your normal, the normal line, the normal frequency in which you operate.
You operate under this intense sort of anxious state and you feel like, well, this is life.
God damn it, I'm depressed or God damn it, I'm anxious.
I got anxiety.
I got to see it shrink.
I got this.
If you just blow that shit out every day...
Every day.
You burn off 2,000 calories and you fucking run for five miles and you do kettlebells and chin-ups and fucking hit the bag for five rounds.
Dude, that shit goes away.
You don't give a fuck.
And then you get to look at things with real clarity.
So there was a lesson learned in that.
And that lesson was only learned because we decided to challenge each other and push ourselves.
Larry Lessig, who was on here the other day, you guys didn't even talk about this, but he basically is one of the founders of Creative Commons and this whole licensing structure for content.
Like what we're saying right now, this is going to be licensed.
I mean, you put hundreds and hundreds of hours into this book and edit this book and then you release the book and someone says, no, you didn't create that.
you're you're a product of determination and I'm gonna just steal your book that's intellectual theft intellectual theft is real it's it's certainly real in terms of a creation of content right if you are a stand-up comedian and someone takes your countless hours of work and steals it that's intellectual theft for sure and then they try to pawn it off as their own through their own selfish needs selfish means That's intellectual theft.
I... What if somebody makes all the money off of your book because they have a better platform to sell your book and they don't give it to you at all and you wrote the book.
Well, it is complex if you're saying that all human beings, essentially, all of your actions have been determined by a lot of factors that are outside of your control.
Whether it's genetics, again, life experience, education, all the different factors.
Your environment.
Is that what's causing you to put out A fucking brilliant record.
Because Stephen King had to spend countless hours in front of his laptop trying to go over each and every sentence and each and every paragraph and suck you in and rope you in and all this work.
I ran into a guy from my high school a couple of weeks ago.
It was weird.
It was so weird.
You know, he remembered some strange story from English class.
And I was like, wow, you remember that?
Like, how weird.
And while he was talking to me, I'm like, is that even really me?
Like, is he even really talking about me?
Because I don't have any connection to the stuff that he's saying.
And I understand that he has this vague, distant, ghost-like memory in his mind of some slide images that he's pieced together that he recognizes as a past interaction.
It's super strange too, like in, you know, 50 or 20, 45, whatever.
You know, if your body can be replaced one piece at a time, as time goes on, then your body literally, you could survive, but your body is going to be like almost completely different.
Somebody used this analogy of certain boats that are like really ancient boats that are on display and every single piece of them from the original boat has been replaced because they rotted away.
And you're like, okay, what am I looking at?
What is this really?
Yeah.
And that's kind of us.
And once that becomes a physical thing.
I met the guy who got his arm and his leg bitten off by a shark.
I'm curious if there's really like superhuman projects that are going on where people actually can have these abilities.
We know that with classified information, it's just we know that there's stuff we don't know that are extraordinary projects.
So, you know, this being in the future, I feel like there's a disconnect between the state of technology on the planet Earth right now with, like, what the public has access to, with what the, you know, black projects have access to.
And that is really not cool because it's not fair for humanity to not understand what is going on.
I think that's true, but I also think that most of the state-of-the-art stuff is peer-reviewed, right?
I mean, there's so many different people working on these different technologies, like CERN. They're working on the Large Hadron Collider or anything else.
There's so many different people working on it.
The people that are at the forefront of the technology, unless they're all gobbled up by the dark government, You know, the people at the head of the line kind of understand where the technology is at currently.
For sure, for you and I, we don't know what the fuck's going on.
But I think you're right.
I think there's probably some government programs where they scoop up the wisest and the brightest.
And, you know, they got Oppenheimer, you know, and got him to develop the Manhattan Project.
I really appreciate your perspective, and I really appreciate your point of view, and I really appreciate your ethics and what you're working towards with minds, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you.
I think it is important.
And as much as I fuck around and play devil's advocate, I do that to try to get to, you know, how you're thinking and whether or not you've had these arguments in your own mind.
But I think, ultimately, I've said this before, and I don't know if it makes sense, because again, I'm not that smart.
I really wonder if there's bottlenecks for progress that we're going to run into.
And I think, ultimately, information is one of the big ones.
And information also, in a lot of ways, is money.
You know, I mean...
When we think of money, we're thinking of ones and zeros that are being moved around on bank accounts.
It's data.
I mean, it's attributed to different people and you get to do more things because you have more of these numbers and more of these things.
But what is it really?
It's not gold-based anymore.
It's not a physical material object that you're coveting.
Now it's some weird thing.
And it's kind of like information on a database.
And what if we get to a certain point in time, and I sort of feel like in this weird, vague, abstract way, we're moving towards this.
It's one of the things that when I really step back and wonder about this trend towards socialism and social democratic thinking, I wonder what that is.
And I honestly think that we're moving towards this idea that, hey, we've got a lot of fucking problems that could be cured if you move some of that money around.
But should you be able to move some of that money around?
And what happens if that money becomes something different?
What if people start developing social currency instead of financial currency?
What if your ability to do things was based on how much you actually put in?
I mean, we're assuming, right?
We assume that the way we do things now, where if you want to buy a car, you have to have $35,000.
That's how much a Mustang costs, and you got to bring it to the bank, and this and that, and you can prove a loan.
But what if we get to a time in the future where it's not these pieces of paper that give you material objects, but rather your own actions and deeds?
Provide you with social currency that allows you to go on vacations, or allows you to eat at restaurants, or allows you to do things, and there's this running tally.
We're gonna see But what I'm saying is if we're doing it in – if it's a social currency and that your own personal behavior allows you to access more freedoms or more goods or more things, it would encourage people.
Positive behavior and community-based behavior because that would be the only way to advance.
I mean, obviously this is a long time down the line, but when the first caveman, you know, traded the first fucking shiny rock for the first spearhead, you know, whatever it was that they did that started this whole inevitable trend towards money, This is not something that has to be this way forever.
And I wonder, when we're looking at the distribution of information, which is arguably, not arguably, it's never been like what we have today.
There's never been a time in human history where everyone had so much access to information that you used to have to pay for.
You used to have to go to schools.
You used to have to earn your way to the position where you could open the very books that had all this information in it.
Now you just get it off your phone.
It's instant.
And this is a whole different way of interfacing with information.
I think this is going to affect higher learning institutes.
I think it's going to affect a lot of different things.
But I wonder if this all can be applied ultimately someday, maybe not in our generation, but someday to money, that people start using social currency.
And that social currency is going to be almost like we have some sort of a database of social currency in this country.
As long as the government can be running on open systems, I think the reason we struggle with trusting the government to distribute wealth is because it's so inefficient.
I mean, at the end of the day, that's a giant problem, period.
If the people that are deciding what we can and can't do with information are also corrupt, which, I mean, there's laws that allow them to be corrupt, but it doesn't mean that they're not corrupt, right?
I feel like every politician, the only politicians that I would support at this point, I want to be pulling us in a direction that is making their own position irrelevant.
Basically, building open, secure voting systems that allow the planet or the country to decide and vote on what we're doing.
I mean, you know, I just think that we need more accurate representation of the consciousness of the communities.
And it shouldn't just be these singular people deciding for everybody.
And by the time they get in there, they're so compromised by the special interest groups that are helping them out and all the different people that are contributing to their campaign fund.